Washington (AFP) - The NFL Players Association announced Friday it has agreed to changes in concussion protocol rules and hoped the league would make the alterations before Sunday's games.
The league, however, only said in its response that the changes were "likely" and gave no timetable as to when updates might be implemented.
While the union wants enhanced safety measures as quickly as possible, the league might not want to impose them before next Tuesday, since the first game of the current competition week was played Thursday with Indianapolis defeating Denver.
The NFL might not want to alter the rules for some clubs when others did not have to play under them, given they could impact the availability of personnel for future contests.
In a statement from the NFL players' union's board and executive committee, the NFLPA declared it had agreed to changes to the "gross motor instability" protocol that were in discussion this week with the league.
The move came in the wake of Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa suffering a head injury on September 25 against Buffalo but being allowed to return to the game despite appearing to struggle to leave the field.
NFL rules require a team physician and unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant to agree that any gross motor instability was caused by a neurological issue to force a player out of a game.
Tagovailoa's status became a greater issue after he was not sent into concussion protocols and allowed to play four days later against Cincinnati, where he was slammed to the turf again and struck his head, leading to him being taken off the field in a stretcher and later diagnosed with a concussion and neck injury.
Tagovailoa was ruled out of this weekend's Dolphins' game against the New York Jets on Monday amid reports the consultant in his case had been fired by the NFLPA and the league and union saying they were talking over changes to the gross motor instability language.
The change would require players displaying such instability being unable to return no matter what.
"Our union has agreed to change the concussion protocols to protect players from returning to play in the case of any similar incident to what we saw on September 25," the union statement said.
"We would like these changes to go into effect before this weekend's games to immediately protect the players and hope the NFL accepts the change before then as well."
The NFL response indicated progress had been made but offered no optimism about rule changes before Sunday's kickoffs, the first of them coming in London between the Green Bay Packers and New York Giants.
"As we have discussed with the NFLPA, we agree that changes to the joint NFL-NFLPA protocols are necessary to further enhance player safety," the NFL statement said.
"We have already spoken to members of the NFL Head, Neck and Spine Committee and the leadership of the Unaffiliated Neurotrauma Consultants and Independent Certified Athletic Trainers who serve as spotters to discuss these likely changes."
